Peatah’s category list is closely tied to info on the Combos page. This helps make both topics more understandable. Let’s start with the categories, and then move on to combinations.

The list on the left has bold headings to show the major design categories followed by subcategories. But let’s start with just two categories:

Serif and Sans Serif. A serif is a small projection that finishes the end of a stroke of a letter. “Sans” is an early French term based on a Latin word that means without. So, that makes the definition of sans serif pretty obvious. Even the novelty types could be worked into these two categories; but we’ll keep them in a separate list.

Excluding the top “abc” example on the left, the remaining text on this page is sans serif, including the text you are currently reading (unless you’ve made some browser preference changes).

To keep it simple, we’ll only cover the serif and sans serif groups at the top.

The novelty styles are used at larger, display sizes (16 points and up) and aren’t normally used for lengthy text. They also have more of a “pay attention to me” personality; so, we won’t discuss them much in the combinations topic either. (Novelty type is typically combined with just a plain sans serif, so attention stays on the former.)

So, click on either of the two boxes at the top left to see the differences in the subcategories.